Friday, February 4, 2011

Continuing with the contributions made by members of Team Toobworld, Vincent Audette sent along these two locations that link a lot of shows set in New York City:

I'm watching 'Blue Bloods' - "Hall of Mirrors" on CBS who try to stop a terrorist attack in NYC. The Reagans are family of cops, Tom Selleck plays the police commish and his sons (Will Estes and Donnie Wahlberg) both work in the 12th Precinct. First, This precinct is the home of TV's 'McCloud', 'Barney Miller', 'The Unusuals', 'Can't Hurry Love', 'Castle' and 'The Beat'.

Secondly, in tonight's episode the suspect is an engineering student at Hudson University. A fictional college used in all of the 'Law & Order' franchise and was mentioned in 'Without A Trace' and 'Tru Calling'.With Hudson University, we can add 'The Cosby Show' and 'DeGrassi: The Next Generation' as two more shows with connections to that seat of learning. And those four shows, along with all of the 'Law & Order' dramas, share the same TV dimension: Earth Prime-Time, the main Toobworld.

It gets trickier with the 12th Precinct. Of the shows mentioned by Vince, these are the ones that exist in the main Toobworld:

'McCloud''Barney Miller''The Unusuals''Can't Hurry Love''The Beat'

'The Beat', although it only lasted a few episodes is a key addition to the Toobworld Dynamic, as it's one of the shows in which Detective John Munch appeared over the years. And it was on UPN, so it adds to his list of many networks as well.

With the end of 'Barney Miller', the original station house was closed down to become a museum dedicated to former police commissioner Teddy Roosevelt. So a new location was chosen which is what we saw each week in 'The Unusuals'. (I wish that show was still on the air.) But with 'Castle' and 'Blue Bloods', each of them had to be relegated to other TV dimensions. And they couldn't share one either. This is because both shows have different mayors for New York City who have appeared in episodes. I've stated in the past that the main Toobworld shares the same mayor as the NYC to be found in the Trueniverse. Currently, that's Mike Bloomberg. He's portrayed himself in episodes of '30 Rock', 'Law & Order', and in a Christmas TV movie with the Muppets. But for 'Blue Bloods', the mayor is named Russo and he's played by Bruce Altman as something of a thorn in the side of Commissioner Reagan. On 'Castle', he's a black man named Bill. Had Bill Thompson won the election vs. Bloomberg in 2009, we could have said that the series was set in the very near future and was not synchronous with the timeline of the real world. ('Castle' debuted in March of 2009.)

Mayor Bill has not been seen since the one episode in which he appeared, but we have to assume he is still the mayor. It's through his friendship that mystery novelist Richard Castle is allowed to tag along with Detective Kate Beckett and her team. Once Bill is no longer the mayor, Castle will probably be outtadere. If the 'Primeval' temporal reboot also takes place in these two TV dimensions, we could consider them brought back into line with the timeline of Earth Prime-Time. But we'd only do that once the series have been cancelled. (That way, no more pesky fictional mayors can show up to ruin it all.) As is the case with a series like 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' with its fictional president, we in the Trueniverse audience will only be able to see the original timeline when watching reruns. But everything in those affected episodes will have been re-adjusted, so that Rick Castle had been friends with Mike Bloomberg, whose police commissioner would then be Frank Reagan.

Sorry, Ray Kelly - you don't have any presence in the main Toobworld.....

One last point - Hudson University also showed up in an episode of 'Castle' - That's where the frame grab came from! - as did the New York Ledger newspaper. So once we can realign the world of 'Castle' with that of Toobworld, it will fit in nicely in a world populated by so many 'Law & Order' spin-offs.Thank you, Vince, for getting the ball rolling, which allowed me to be so long-winded on the topic. Others may not be so appreciative because of that......

Just An Old Cowhand On The TiVo Grande

As the Trickster once said, "Reality is boring, that's why I change it whenever I can."
I'm just "The Man Who Viewed Too Much", and "Inner Toob" is a blog exploring and celebrating the 'reality' of an alternate universe in which everything that ever happened on TV actually takes place.
Most of my theories about the TV Universe come from thinking inside the box and thus can't be proven. But I've never been one to shy away from a tall tale.....
Remember: "The more you watch, the more you've seen!"